Today is National Chocolate Day, which, with Halloween around the corner, only makes sense.

If you hold yourself to tight restrictions on junk food, it also gives you an easy out to "celebrate" the day.

Interestingly though, chocolate does have some health benefits*. However, it is the boring dark chocolate that holds the large share of that. Milk chocolate has slight benefits, while white chocolate is essentially the prairie wind of chocolate, in that it is annoying and no one likes it. So I'm told.

Dark chocolate contains a chemical that is converted into phenylethylamine (fen-ill-eth-ill-ah-mine [I think]) which is dubbed 'the love drug' as it is secreted when a person falls in love. 

It is also full of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals (dark chocolate, not love), and is good for your heart, brain, controls blood sugar, reduces stress, and perhaps oddly, serves as cough relief (goodbye cough drops!).

As I type this, I dream of a bed of mini eggs, though come to think of it, a massive chocolate cake would probably be pretty comfortable as well.

*blogger not liable for overdoses of chocolate